All you who are holy brothers and have had the same heavenly call should turn your minds to Jesus, the apostle and the high priest of our religion. He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just like Moses, who stayed faithful in all his house; but he has been found to deserve a greater glory than Moses. It is the difference between the honour given to the man that built the house and to the house itself. Every house is built by someone, of course; but God built everything that exists. It is true that Moses was faithful in the house of God, as a servant, acting as witness to the things which were to be divulged later; but Christ was faithful as a son, and as the master in the house. And we are his house, as long as we cling to our hope with the confidence that we glory in.

The Holy Spirit says: If only you would listen to him today; do not harden your hearts, as happened in the Rebellion, on the Day of Temptation in the wilderness, when your ancestors challenged me and tested me, though they had seen what I could do for forty years. That was why I was angry with that generation and said: How unreliable these people who refuse to grasp my ways! And so, in anger, I swore that not one would reach the place of rest I had for them. Take care, brothers, that there is not in any one of your community a wicked mind, so unbelieving as to turn away from the living God. Every day, as long as this ‘today’ lasts, keep encouraging one another so that none of you is hardened by the lure of sin, because we shall remain co-heirs with Christ only if we keep a grasp on our first confidence right to the end. In this saying: If only you would listen to him today; do not harden your hearts, as happened in the Rebellion, those who rebelled after they had listened were all the people who were brought out of Egypt by Moses. And those who made God angry for forty years were the ones who sinned and whose dead bodies were left lying in the wilderness. Those that he swore would never reach the place of rest he had for them were those who had been disobedient. We see, then, that it was because they were unfaithful that they were not able to reach it.

Responsory

Heb 3:6; Ep 2:21

℟. Christ is faithful as the Son in charge of God’s house,* and we are his house.

℣. In him the whole building is bonded together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord,* and we are his house.

Second Reading

From a sermon by Saint Leo the Great, pope

The Cross of Christ is the source of all blessings, the cause of all graces

Our understanding, which is enlightened by the Spirit of truth, should receive with purity and freedom of heart the glory of the cross as it shines in heaven and on earth. It should see with inner vision the meaning of the Lord’s words when he spoke of the imminence of his passion: The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Afterward he said: Now my soul is troubled, and what am I to say? Father, save me from this hour. But it was for this that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your Son. When the voice of the Father came from heaven, saying, I have glorified him, and will glorify him again, Jesus said in reply to those around him: It was not for me that this voice spoke, but for you. Now is the judgement of the world, now will the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself.

How marvellous the power of the cross; how great beyond all telling the glory of the passion: here is the judgement-seat of the Lord, the condemnation of the world, the supremacy of Christ crucified.

Lord, you drew all things to yourself so that the devotion of all peoples everywhere might celebrate, in a sacrament made perfect and visible, what was carried out in the one temple of Judea under obscure foreshadowings.

Now there is a more distinguished order of Levites, a greater dignity for the rank of elders, a more sacred anointing for the priesthood, because your cross is the source of all blessings, the cause of all graces. Through the cross the faithful receive strength from weakness, glory from dishonour, life from death.

The different sacrifices of animals are no more: the one offering of your body and blood is the fulfilment of all the different sacrificial offerings, for you are the true Lamb of God: you take away the sins of the world. In yourself you bring to perfection all mysteries, so that, as there is one sacrifice in place of all other sacrificial offerings, there is also one kingdom gathered from all peoples.

Dearly beloved, let us then acknowledge what Saint Paul, the teacher of the nations, acknowledged so exultantly: This is a saying worthy of trust, worthy of complete acceptance: Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners.

God’s compassion for us is all the more wonderful because Christ died, not for the righteous or the holy but for the wicked and the sinful, and, though the divine nature could not be touched by the sting of death, he took to himself, through his birth as one of us, something he could offer on our behalf.

The power of his death once confronted our death. In the words of Hosea the prophet: Death, I shall be your death; grave, I shall swallow you up. By dying he submitted to the laws of the underworld; by rising again he destroyed them. He did away with the everlasting character of death so as to make death a thing of time, not of eternity. As all die in Adam, so all will be brought to life in Christ.

Responsory

℟. Christ has done away with every record of the debt that we had to pay, by nailing it to the cross.* On that cross he despoiled the cosmic powers and authorities, and boldly made a spectacle of them, leading them as captives in his triumphal procession.

℣. ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man on the cross, you will know that I am he.’* On that cross he despoiled the cosmic powers and authorities, and boldly made a spectacle of them, leading them as captives in his triumphal procession.

Let us pray.

May your people, Lord,

persevere in obedience to your will,

so that through this obedience

your Church in our time

may grow in grace and increase in numbers.

Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

Let us praise the Lord.

– Thanks be to God.

The psalms and canticles here are our own translation. The Grail translation of the psalms, which is used liturgically in most of the English-speaking world, cannot be displayed on the Web for copyright reasons. The Universalis apps, programs and downloads do contain the Grail translation of the psalms.